The larger role of class in academic success surprises

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Bianca Gonzalez, a low-income student who earned an associate’s degree at a community college, works as a spa receptionist, one of her two jobs, in Galveston, Texas.

By Jason DeParle
New York Times
December 23, 2012

GALVESTON, Texas — ­Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth ­armor — black boots, chains, and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself for a metal band and vowed to ­become the first in her family to earn a college degree.

‘’I don’t want to work at ­Wal-Mart’’ as her mother did, she wrote to a school counselor.

Weekends, summers were devoted to a college-readiness program, where her best friends, Melissa O’Neal and ­Bianca Gonzalez, shared her drive to ‘‘get off the island,’’ to escape the prospect of dead-end lives in luckless Galveston.

Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her ­father’s death. They stuck together so much that a tutor dubbed them the triplets.

Low-income strivers face uphill climbs, especially at Ball High School, where a third of girls in the class failed to graduate on schedule. But by the time the triplets donned mortarboards in the class of 2008, their story seemed to validate the promise of education as the great equalizer.

Angelica, a daughter of a struggling Mexican immigrant, was headed to Emory University. Bianca enrolled in community college, and Melissa left for Texas State University, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s alma mater. ‘‘It felt like we were taking off, from one life to another,’’ Melissa said. ‘‘It felt like, ‘Here we go!’ ’’

Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic inequality. None has a four-year degree. Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store.

Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school added complications. With little guidance from family or school officials, college ­became a leap that they braved without a safety net.

The story of their lost footing is also the story of something larger: the growing role of education in preserving class divisions. Poor students have long trailed affluent peers in school performance, but from grade-school tests to college completion, the gaps are growing. With school success and earning prospects ever more entwined, the consequences carry far: Education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying them.

‘‘Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer, the place where upward mobility gets started,’’ said Greg J. ­Duncan, an economist at the University of California Irvine. ‘‘But on virtually every measure we have, the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening.”

The growing role of class in academic success has taken ­experts by surprise since it follows decades of equal opportunity efforts and counters racial trends, where differences have narrowed. It adds to fears over recent evidence suggesting that low-income Americans have lower chances of upward ­mobility than counterparts in Canada and Western Europe.

Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees, accord­ing to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.

While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead. Probable reasons include soaring incomes at the top and changes in family structure, which have left fewer low-income students with the financial and emotional support of two-parent homes. Neighborhoods have grown more segregated by class, leaving lower-income students increasingly concentrated in lower-quality schools.

And even after accounting for financial aid, the costs of attend­ing a public university have risen 60 percent in the past two decades. Many low-income students, feeling the need to help out at home, are deterred by the thought of years of lost wages and piles of debt.

In placing their hopes in ­education, the Galveston teenagers followed a tradition as old as the country itself. But if only the prosperous become educated and only the educated prosper, the schoolhouse risks becoming just another place where the fortunate preserve their edge.

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